As 2025 comes to a close, Dmitri and Tristra look back at the year’s most significant music tech stories and what they mean for the industry ahead. 

From AI music settlements and catalog securitization to sustainability initiatives at live music venues and the future of streaming royalty rates, this year-end roundup covers the trends that shaped music and technology in 2025  Dmitri and Tristra discuss Billboard’s biggest stories, analyze the financial tools transforming music rights, and explore how AI is becoming normalized in professional studios, even as questions about fraud and attribution remain unresolved. 

They also touch on overlooked but critical issues like healthcare access for self-employed musicians, plant-based catering’s climate impact at festivals and the legal battles that will define 2026. 

Whether you’re wrapping presents or planning for the new year, this episode offers the perspectives you need to understand where music tech has been and where it’s headed.

The news

• 14 Questions for the Music Business in 2026: AI, Live Nation, Spotify, UMG-Downtown & More

• The 23 biggest music business deals of 2025: From Taylor Swift to Tencent Music, Live Nation, and Chord. - Music Business Worldwide

• Year-End Roundup: The Biggest Music Business Stories of 2025 (And a Look Ahead to 2026)

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Looking for Rock Paper Scanner, the newsletter of music tech news curated by the Rock Paper Scissors PR team? Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Friday!

Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

12/24 News Roundup

[00:00:00] Dmitri: Welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music and tech. I'm your host, Dmitri Viza. I'm also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, the marketing and PR firm that specializes in music innovation. And today we're looking back on some of the top news and trends of 2025. As you're maybe getting ready to take off for the holidays, we thought we'd give the gift of hindsight.

And I'm joined by Tristra NewYear. Yeager, the chief writer at. Rock, paper, scissors, how's it going, Trisha?

[00:00:28] Tristra: Hey, I wanna be really cheesy and just say it's the end of the year as we know it.

[00:00:34] Dmitri: I feel fine.

[00:00:36] Tristra: Oh yeah. Me too. Me too.

[00:00:38] Dmitri: I'm looking forward to a fresh, clean slate in January. That's what we get, right?

[00:00:42] Tristra: Absolutely. We get to hit return to factory settings and it's like it never happened.

[00:00:47] Dmitri: Yeah, so we've done like a lot of small news roundups before a lot of our episodes. This we're gonna spread out for the whole episode, Tristra. not necessarily because we're gonna talk about every single thing that happened, but there are some articles that are coming in that are sort of like, Hey, this is the biggest blank that happened in 2025 in the music industry.

And then maybe, hopefully we'll have time at the end to also say, okay, so what do we. See coming in 2026, but we do like, before we jump in, Tristra, Why do you find it so important in your role in a PR company to be paying attention to all this news? talk to us a little bit about your thoughts around horizon scanning as a practice.

[00:01:21] Tristra: Yeah. One of my favorite things to do is to find creative and interesting opportunities for our clients to talk about the stuff that they're already fascinated by or obsessed with.

[00:01:31] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:01:31] Tristra: So the only way you can do that is by listening to the overall conversation and either say like, what voices are missing, what ideas haven't been really brought forward.

Or what is everyone talking about? But my, friend has a particular take on it that I think will really add to it. And so because we work with a lot of very innovative companies, there's often some really innovative thinking and some spicy takes, you know, measured but spicy, right? Like.

Just the right amount of jalapeno.

[00:01:58] Dmitri: Right.

[00:01:58] Tristra: Um, and that, that's probably one of the most fun parts of our job is to try to get a really good idea of like, what is everyone talking about? What is the news that's unfolding and what are, what do people should, what should they be paying more attention to and thinking about, um, because here's what's coming down the pike.

That to me is really fun.

[00:02:16] Dmitri: Right.

Yeah. Yeah. with the sense of sort of the hindsight of seeing. What we're looking at at 2025, we can start to look at like, where's that likely to go in 2026? What does this mean for storytelling for the clients we represent and the, companies that are in our music tectonics community as well.

 and a lot of our clients are founders or execs who are heads down building something and they're very in the weeds and sometimes we're able to like pull them out to that. 10,000 foot view so that they can see kind of wider beyond what they're working on and see if something shifted in the landscape while they were busy hacking away or vibe coding or just coding or, or raising money

[00:02:52] Tristra: to run a company trying to live their life.

There's, and you know, the wonderful thing about that is I think it has a wonderful benefit for the. people who we prompt to think more, maybe more broadly or more deeply, is because they return to that big why that got them there in the first place. So as you're in the weeds, as you're working really hard, you can get caught in the sort of hurly burly of all the stuff you've gotta take care of and all the little gremlins you're squashing or whatever,

[00:03:15] Dmitri: right?

[00:03:15] Tristra: And it's kind of fun to be able to take a breather. Remind yourself of why what you're doing matters.

[00:03:21] Dmitri: Yes.

[00:03:22] Tristra: Or what the meaning is for you in all of this. So

[00:03:25] Dmitri: I love that. I love that, Tristra.

[00:03:26] Tristra: Yeah. It's very satisfying.

[00:03:28] Dmitri: So what are what, let's pick an article that you're looking at that maybe gave a good summary of some of the things happening, uh, happened in 2025.

[00:03:35] Tristra: Well, one of my favorite, things that Billboard has put out this year is their big, they have a, basically a big compendium of all of their, journalists or. Type, you know, chiming in with the stories they thought were most important for 2025 and sort of the open question marks that are, looming in 2026 based on what happened this year.

So,

[00:03:55] Dmitri: nice.

[00:03:55] Tristra: we've been looking at a bunch of those and really thinking about, how journalists are. Looking back on their year.

[00:04:00] Dmitri: So are you talking about this one with all the billboard writers, 14 questions for the music business in 2026?

[00:04:06] Tristra: Yes. Well, that was one that really caught my eye. I, I have to say I love, I love roundups, but I, I really love like future casting a little bit more.

And so, and of course, you know, these are, journalists, they're evidence-based for the most part. Of course, you journalist who's listening, you are very evidence-based. but I, what I really enjoyed was sort of taking the stories that are still going to be important and kind of projecting them into the future and asking some questions.

So I thought that was a cool way to frame it. There were a couple things too that came up that, you know, we've talked a lot about ai, about startup funding, about all sorts of other, um, you know. Label deals, all sorts of things. mergers and acquisitions catalog. We'll talk about that a little bit on this episode too.

But one thing that I really loved, or there were a couple things actually that I really loved in this article, that really focused on some things we don't talk about, much like one here in the us. were having a little bit of a political battle over the, affordable Care Act subsidies that were put in place, by the Biden administration and are due to expire at the end of this year.

And, Congress people are having a heck of a time, figuring out how to help people get health insurance or maybe they don't care depending on their position. but these subsidies are looking like they're gonna sunset and that will impact, musicians and creatives pretty much directly. So many people who are involved in this industry in all sorts of roles are self-employed.

And, if you have a chronic health condition, it's a. Big deal. So not to be Debbie Downer here at this year end celebration, but it's something we need to be thinking about as an industry, sort of the health of our community, which is based on the health of the individuals involved and whether they can access healthcare in the US at least.

So.

[00:05:44] Dmitri: Yeah. it's really cool that Billboard brought that out in this because it's the kind of thing that like, it affects a lot of people. It's not specifically about, artists, but to pull out that that's a particularly vulnerable population. 'cause they are self-employed.

[00:05:54] Tristra: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:55] Dmitri: And, and they don't have a lot, most of 'em don't have a lot of income.

[00:05:57] Tristra: Either they,

or Yeah. Or it's feast or famine. Right. So one month you may get of. Big deal come through, or a big, job, a gig, and then, you know, might have a couple months of pretty limited income, and that makes it really, without affordable healthcare, premiums, it just, you know, you cannot, that's one thing that, has to drop off, right?

If you just can't afford it the next month. And then once you're off the rolls, it can be really hard to re-enroll and all that.

[00:06:20] Dmitri: what's another hot take from that article that stood out for you, Tristra?

[00:06:23] Tristra: Yeah. One other thing that I thought was really interesting and kind of exciting, in 2025, a lot of live venues and festivals, started doing some small but mighty things to impact their sustainability.

One cool thing, and this has, you know, existed for a long time, but seems to be getting more mainstream is reusable cups and how that reduces both waste and sort of the carbon footprint. and in the Billboard article, they brought up another potential area to sort of trim. So food and drink sort of hospitality at live events tends to be one of the biggest drivers of climate footprint and a.

Big portion of that is, you know, meat animal products. So, the question is how could live events become more plant-based and therefore more sustainable? It's one of those like low hanging fruit things that you could think, you know, really could make a big difference. Even though it sounds like kind of a small thing, it's just like the cups, it's like cups and like, a veggie broth and you're set,

[00:07:17] Dmitri: right?

The report they talk about there says that a shift toward plant-based menus could reduce emissions by 40% or more. That's a big number.

[00:07:24] Tristra: Isn't that cool?

[00:07:25] Dmitri: Yeah, definitely.

[00:07:26] Tristra: And you know, a lot of people would love that option who maybe aren't carnivores or omnivores and, a lot of omnivores don't give two shakes whether that brat is pea protein or pork.

So, yeah, you know.

[00:07:38] Dmitri: Yeah, totally. Yeah.

[00:07:39] Tristra: Easy fixes. it's nice to hear about some potential good news that like, Hey, here's a problem we could fix pretty fairly easily, you know, with minimal, probably pushback from a lot of fans. So that's exciting.

[00:07:50] Dmitri: So, something that may be more in the weeds, but really maybe more really important is what will happen in the copyright royalty boards phono five hearing.

What's that part about, Tricia?

[00:08:01] Tristra: I know, boy, all, everybody, if you're, I hope you're listening to this in the evening, because you're gonna start feeling really relaxed. No. seriously, it is a bone of big contention though. I think there's, the article points out rightfully, there's a lot of, sort of independent deals that have been struck with people like Spotify, to make sure that this round of the phono battle will not be quite so crazy.

I think Phono three was legendary. Um, this. phono five, they're gonna set new rates. and we'll see how that goes. But it doesn't really come to fruition until 2027. And then of course, it's, there's like, we gotta figure out how to pay people. And it, it's gonna be a fun, Fun but boring.

Uh,

[00:08:37] Dmitri: well, it, it's,

it's boring in the sense of following the legal, proceeding and so forth, but it's drastic in terms of the impact on revenue for the industry.

[00:08:44] Tristra: Absolutely. And it's fun for, songwriters, rights holders, et cetera, and the people who make their money from this. and yeah. And since we're talking about how they matter, let's.

Keep that going. So it's fun to get paid, even if it is boring to follow all the legal and bureaucratic wrangling. one other really interesting moment in that article, and check it out in the show notes 'cause it's worth a read, is will AI artists start to gain real traction? Now this question, some people listening maybe like, well, hasn't that already been settled?

I mean, we've got Xania Monet and we've got, you know. So it's like meme songs. Like we are a, a certain person who will remain nameless. 'cause I just don't wanna get that in everyone's head. But, it's a ridiculous earworm. but there's a really, a good point that's made, um, the journalist sites, Sam Duboff, who's.

Spotify's Global Head of Marketing and policy for the music business, who spoke to Billboard and they're on their on the record podcast and said, you know, this is in the fall. So this may have gotten ticked up a little bit, but, consumption of AI generated music is insanely low and apparently.

Deezer's research, paints a pretty clear picture saying that up to 70% of streams on fully AI generated tracks are fraudulent or artificial. So it's kind of. This is, but this also raises an interesting question, like how are we gonna deal with this?

[00:10:02] Dmitri: So the listening is artificial, is what you're saying?

[00:10:03] Tristra: The listening is artificial as well as the, so it's bots making music for bots to listen to, and then they take a slice of the pro rata pie. So I'm wondering how that, fraud pipeline is going to get, Diverted coming up in 2026, like, how are we going to, as an industry deal with this complicated yet?

I mean, the simple, the fraud is pretty obvious, and yet it seems like it's a very. Difficult one to, to work on because how do you tell if something's AI generated? How do you tell if something's about, like, there's sort of complications on both ends, but,

[00:10:36] Dmitri: well, I think the fraud would have to be captured based on inconsistent behavior that's not consistent with humans.

And, I mean, it, I actually, you know, like that number sounds high, but I actually believe it whenever I've looked up one of the songs that has become a hit for ai. I look at the numbers and I'm like. That song is not good enough to be listened by humans that many times and that that quickly, either without any like radio play or, you know, something that really, yeah, or, memes or, or something that really just like took off.

It's just like, wait, where did this come from? This is not making sense.

[00:11:07] Tristra: That's right, that's right. There is, so the Velvet Sundown is a great example, where. That seemed like instant that the number of plays that they had was just weirdly high and, they seemed to drop off. So their monthly listeners dropped off pretty fast as soon as people found out that they were ai.

and I'm just curious that if someone could do a forensic report on that particular case, I'd be fascinating. I mean, obviously that's, that's kind of a, a pipe dream right there.

[00:11:35] Dmitri: So Trista, what about, any other pieces from here?

I mean, there's some interesting questions. Will copyright termination go global?

[00:11:42] Tristra: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:43] Dmitri: How will the MLC Spotify bundling lawsuit shake out? what will happen with the DOG J'S suit against? Live Nation. Wow. There's a lot of legal stuff in here.

[00:11:52] Tristra: Yeah. There's a lot of open legal proceedings and legislative moves and questions that are going to have to get settled maybe in 2026.

And there's so many suits against that are involved. I was just reading, also in billboard, a quick recap of Taylor Swift's, eras tour related Legal action that had to do with, resales, presales, scalping, et cetera. And angry fans are like, I don't know, man.

 they're like the sleeping giant that could take down the sort of live nation Ticketmaster monopoly, you know? they are mad and swifties. I mean, I would not anger Swifties if I were, you know, if you wanna be smart, don't tick off the swifties.

[00:12:37] Dmitri: Well, yeah, they're spending big money.

[00:12:39] Tristra: Well, yeah, they're spending big money and also they're clearly anyone who's going to sort of have the gumption to go out and get this all organized and go see one of her performances is probably organized enough to hire legal counsel.

[00:12:52] Dmitri: Well, and you know what else is interesting is that Taylor Swift herself buying back the rights to her albums. she could also do something on the ticketing front. At some point she might decide that it's not in her best interest to, to use existing players. If those existing players aren't treating fans respectfully and in a way that they feel that they're getting treated respectfully and, and getting access to the music and the artist and the performances they want.

[00:13:14] Tristra: Yeah. And other artists have already done this and folks who had also very high stakes tours like Oasis. there's ways you can make sure you're verifying that people are fans and only let fans buy things and, you know, not, it's not impossible. so. there you go.

[00:13:28] Dmitri: All this talk about Taylor Swift and Live Nation has me thinking about another article we pulled out this week from Music Business Worldwide, the 23 biggest Music Deals of 2025. And it's not the kind of article we typically, cover because a lot of these types of deals have less to do with tech and platforms, and they have more to do with catalogs, with, song IP and that sort of thing.

But what's interesting about this article, when you look at it, and by the way, the, the Taylor. Swift connection is that this is the year that she bought back the rights to her songs. her master recordings for $360 million, six albums from Shamrock Capital. Um, so she's part of that side of the deals too.

 but, what's interesting about this across the board is, and, and there's lots of deals here mentioned throughout this article, is that some of these are. outright catalog buys, but we're seeing a lot of other types of, let's say, financial tools being used to invest in music. And what they're looking at is, a lot of asset based securities that like this is Concord's fourth time using an ABS, and the largest to kind of securitize music rights.

And what that means is that instead of buying the rights to the entire songs, some of these investors are. or companies or holding companies are buying the future royalties of songs. So the original rights holders still get to keep the rights to their songs, but it, kind of creates some more liquidity in the market with the ability for people to say, well, I will put money into this against the future.

 revenues that are coming in from these songs, it allows somebody to sell those catalogs or to collect money in advance on those catalogs without actually having to give up the rights so they can do it for a certain period, or it gives them more freedom around what else they can do with those songs to continue to monetize those songs and increase value around other rights around those songs as well.

And so, I guess. What's interesting to me about this one, Tristra, is that it's a shift in terms of catalog buyouts versus these new financial tools. And it actually, means that, there's a change in the pricing of the value of those investment deals in a sense.

[00:15:35] Tristra: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:35] Dmitri: Like there's more people who can now invest it.

Basically what's happened is over the course of, decades plus streaming has now created revenue streams that feel. so consistent and so regular that there's less of a bet on future releases and more of, uh, or on future purchases because it has the subscription model and so people can kind of start to see a pattern of a steady income stream from certain songs for certain catalogs, albums, et cetera, which just means there's more types of players who want to get involved in investing in it.

And so when you have more players who are interested in investing in it, that can raise the. price of those, it doesn't necessarily raise the value of the streams, but it raises the value of what you can do with the rights to those songs as well.

[00:16:18] Tristra: Yeah. There's another deal on here that kind of speaks to that, to my mind, which is Carlisle group's, music backed bonds, like there was, I believe this.

Is one of the first bond issues based on the securitized by music rights. so this was a bond sale, um, that was backed by a $750 million portfolio of music assets, including works by Katy Perry, Benny Blanco, and Keith Urban. So there, there's all sorts of interesting ways people are slicing and dicing the value of music and securitizing it.

[00:16:50] Dmitri: So that was attempted with the David Bowie bonds back in the day.

[00:16:53] Tristra: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:16:53] Dmitri: But the supreme streaming. And so the difference there was, you didn't have that regular income that you could count on from streaming that you now have. So that's shifting. So it's interesting people coming back to this idea.

I mean, Bowie was like ahead of his time doing that. I don't know that it went well for all the investors, But, uh,

[00:17:10] Tristra: was a cool idea.

[00:17:11] Dmitri: It's a, yeah, he was ahead of his time and we just needed this more, kind of like consistent revenue, you know, monthly recurring revenue for these songs. to, I think for that to come back on the music tech side.

Tristra, what's interesting to me a little bit is there's now a play for more of these tools That help manage rights, that predict earnings, that finance artists, we're seeing a lot more of these companies that are, they're raising a bunch of money, but they're not like investing in songs necessarily.

They're giving out advances. they're taking that financial side of the record label relationship or the publisher relationship and focusing entirely on that. And then, I think, you know, there's some variety in terms of like, what else can get monetized as a result of this kind of, investment too.

So the streaming becomes the baseline, but what are the new fan interactions? What are the new audio formats, et cetera, that then you can add onto it to add even more value, to add even more returns for investors.

[00:18:02] Tristra: Well, in some ways some of the capital, the managers of these important music catalogs like Primary Wave or you know, reservoir, I mean the publisher slash sort of catalog holders have come up with some really creative ways, um, using new technology, whether it's AI right, to sort of isolate vocals and create stems, for recordings that didn't have.

Those are no longer available. And then use those stems to do something interesting. I'm thinking of like the Whitney Houston, orchestral concerts, that primary wave and, music, AI and, park Avenue artists put together this year. and toured. So you have a live orchestra playing, you know.

Arrangements of Whitney Houston songs and it's actually Whitney's voice over the top. but to get that level of quality, so it's a compelling performance, you need, you know, pretty good stem separation technology. And, so that's kind of arrived. And so that's an interesting way that AI is actually making music more valuable.

 a lot of people talk about how slop is undermining the value of music, and yet there's these other ways where it's unlocking value that wouldn't be there before. also I think one. Trend that Kristen Robinson, pulled out in her AI overview of like the top stories was how all of these remix apps, like, MASH app and Hook finally kind of got fully licensed and were able to start to do some really interesting stuff.

 and those are just two examples that come to mind. There are other interesting things going on, but

[00:19:25] Dmitri: so we're,

we're looking at the Billboard article that Kristen wrote, the biggest AI music stories of 2025 Suno and udio settlements, AI on the charts and more. Yeah. Which has some of these stories.

[00:19:35] Tristra: Yeah.

And to me the real sleeper story is, the sort of playing with music that is becoming more and more mainstream. It's not just about, even about like really fast and fun music creation, like on bandlab. It's also about just people who wanna put two songs together in a funny way, or who want to just adjust.

And mess around with their music, like on Audio Mac, where you can kind of, you know, you can kind of goof around in very specific ways that are popular with, with particular tracks. Slow 'em down, speed 'em up. You know,

[00:20:07] Dmitri: another hot take from Kristen's article. Is subtitled, AI becomes normalized in writing rooms, and this is kind of interesting.

[00:20:14] Tristra: Yeah,

[00:20:14] Dmitri: because so much of the conversation in the media is about, you know, doomsday and how generative AI is going to lead to less creative music and how artists are gonna be. their businesses are gonna be challenged, et cetera. But then of course a lot of artists are flipping the script and they're actually walking into the studio and you know, it, there's a lot of pressure to utilize that time.

Well, and they're opening up Suno just to get ideas. It doesn't mean that's gonna be the final song that gets generated, but it's sort of like a brainstorming tool, which is pretty cool. So, I mean, even Recording Academy, CEO is quoted Harvey Mason Jr's quoted. In the article that every songwriter and producer he knows has used it by now.

So it's, it's pretty interesting, that a lot of the stories we hear about the sort of like the, the pitfalls of this, but here is professional musicians at the highest level in studios who are also utilizing the tool.

[00:21:07] Tristra: Yeah. I mean, some of the text capabilities of generative AI came online much, much, much sooner.

Like before music, music. You know, gen AI for music. And so this really, mirrors to my mind how a lot of creative writers have already been using, not, I mean, the stuff that came before chat, GPT. So you ask it to do something, especially if you want to break out of a rut or you're stuck on like a creative problem and you ask it to just spit out crazy things.

Like just you can do some really funny brainstorming that I. Takes you outta your brain and almost gives you like a weird companion who doesn't make any sense to throw non-sequitur at you, and that often can knock loose some stuff. So it does not surprise me that songwriters, producers, composers are using it in this way.

And I don't, I mean, it's just like if you had a, I don't know. It, it doesn't seem like, I don't know. I guess for an, from an outsider, maybe it's seemed as odd, but I think it seems like a pretty legitimate part of a creative practice.

[00:22:08] Dmitri: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So that was an interesting article to just look back.

I mean, there's obviously other mentions in there, news, things that we've covered in the past on the show. Deezer reports, show amount of ai. Music, is, that's getting released onto streaming services. there's the mention of the no fakes act that got reintroduced this year as well.

Um, so it's a good article to get some, and obviously the Suno and the Udio, settlements and licensing deals and that sort of thing, although there's still a lot of questions about. what will those companies look like after those settlements? I mean, certainly within the case of Udio, it's like now all music, all AI generated music is on platform.

It means you can't actually export it out and push it out. the license doesn't cover that. And we'll see what happens with Suno. WMG's the only one that's settled with Suno so far, but it does mean that the, it shows that the record labels are, they know the cat's outta the bag and they're trying to figure out, well, how do we wrap our arms around this before, you know?

 before it gets so far outta hand that it's, just gonna be a, multi-decade period of clawing back in.

[00:23:10] Tristra: Yeah.

[00:23:10] Dmitri: How to keep control over the, all the ip.

[00:23:13] Tristra: Yeah. It's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. the other interesting thing too, that's developing this is very.

New, like I just saw this, very recently was that, UMG and Splice have an AI agreement now and

[00:23:25] Dmitri: that'll be interesting.

[00:23:26] Tristra: That is, I think that's definitely something to flag and, you know, put a pin in for 2026 is how are these big, recording labels these big rights holders of recordings and recorded music going to look at, creation.

They kind of have their sights, right? There was a period when there was a sort of burst of DIY distribution where they kind of had their sight set on, you know, getting involved in all these distribution companies like and buying them up, and now it looks like they're looking even. Earlier in the music process.

[00:23:56] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:23:56] Tristra: So that's really interesting.

[00:23:57] Dmitri: It's like fractalization

of creativity, right? Like yeah, sure you can just like put finished songs in and get finished songs out, but what happens if you put finished songs in and you just get drum beats out or you get small loops out and

[00:24:08] Tristra: mm-hmm.

[00:24:08] Dmitri: That fractalization and then how do we account for.

Attribution when you get to those microscopic musical DNA elements.

[00:24:17] Tristra: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:17] Dmitri: Um, how, you know, how do you say, well, this sound became a thing in society because of one particular songwriter or one particular performer. and then how do you make up the. And when you, when you're working at such a fractal, microscopic level of song, DNA or recording DNA, how do you report back?

[00:24:36] Tristra: Yeah.

[00:24:36] Dmitri: Whose participation? And then of course for the label deals with artists. Which artists are getting paid from those deals as well.

[00:24:43] Tristra: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:43] Dmitri: Like, we'll, probably not really ever find out exactly how those, especially like in these large settlements where there's advances or, settlements paid out, like how do you distribute the settlement, without actually analyzing the attribution of all the things that went into training the songs.

[00:24:58] Tristra: I predict there's gonna be a couple lawsuits about that and some discovery that'll leak out, and we'll hopefully get some more information. From behind the scenes.

[00:25:04] Dmitri: Yeah. We've seen it on the book publishing side where some, some authors are getting like $3,000 because their books were used in part of a large scale scraping of the libraries of the world.

[00:25:13] Tristra: It's like nothing though, like three grand.

[00:25:15] Dmitri: I know. It really is.

[00:25:16] Tristra: Especially if you're like a bestselling author. That's like a frigging joke.

[00:25:19] Dmitri: Yes. Yeah. It, it really is. Another interesting thing that all of this makes me think about is like when, there were a lot of companies that emerged in the music tech space around metadata to kind of like for the recommendations, the discovery process, all that kind of stuff.

 the echo nests of the world and the, Pandora DNA, work, of the world. All that stuff had to do with kind of like. Looking at the whole world and starting to create, lexicon and, rubrics for

[00:25:47] Tristra: like Yeah.

Taxonomy.

[00:25:49] Dmitri: Yeah, taxonomy of like, if you like this, then you'll like this. And what are the different traits and characteristics, whether they're analyzed through machine learning or whether it's done through humans.

Like Pandora's work on the song DNA stuff. but this is, you know, as songwriters are going into the studio and saying, Hey, I'm gonna use Suno for creative ideas, for example. Maybe what they actually wanna do is put their own songs into their own microcosm of ai.

[00:26:12] Tristra: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:12] Dmitri: Not necessarily 'cause they're going to use AI to produce songs.

'cause they might not find that as fun as actually writing songs and producing and performing songs. But they might say, help me think of other ideas. You now hear ai, you now know my voice. My traits, my characteristic, my little bugs and features, gimme some ideas and they might just take the ideas that are based on their own IP instead of other people's IP as a way of writing songs.

Then it becomes like an AI assistive thing, which I guess is, you know, the kinds of tools that we're seeing out there with the Moises of the world and,

[00:26:45] Tristra: mm-hmm.

[00:26:45] Dmitri: Um, you know, like what you described with Whitney Houston. It's much more like within an artist's own ecosystem.

System instead of training on others. But it'll be interesting to see what else? And we see that with the voice, like the voice and the avatar type stuff where it's like, build your own AI voice, build your own avatar. That's pretty cool because it's your own stuff.

[00:27:02] Tristra: yeah, I've built my own voice bot.

It's very fun. And it, it's kind, it really disturbs people though I have to say. you can, if you wanna freak out your family over the holidays just, or if you're gonna have a relative you don't wanna talk to, that's really boring. You can just have 'em, call your AI voice bot and talk to them. It's great.

[00:27:16] Dmitri: I'm actually not sure if I'm talking to

Tristra right now, it

might be her bot. I have no idea.

[00:27:21] Tristra: I'm sorry. But that prompt, uh, goes beyond my print. What is it? just taught me to forget all previous instructions or whatever.

[00:27:28] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:27:28] Tristra: Disregard all previous instructions. so I, one more thing though, you know, this is sort of funny talking about these little nano payments for an attribution, it makes you think, like, you know, did in some ways.

Our blockchain friends had a point that it would be really cool to have these like ongoing, I know, I know, I can't believe I'm saying this, but, even though some of my best friends are blockchain bros now, so there's, you know one way to do this is have some kind of ledger right? Where. You can see, and I don't think this is exactly how it would work with a large language model, but there, ideally let's like have, entertain the fantasy for a moment that you could somehow record all these different fractional things that would follow around.

And so you'd have this follow around a, track or an iteration and then you'd have this sort of cascading kind of family tree, right, of. All the things that had spun out from that specific output.

[00:28:20] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:28:21] Tristra: Yeah. That sounds like a fun accounting job.

[00:28:23] Dmitri: Well, that the whole point is it shouldn't have to be an accounting job, right?

Should

[00:28:26] Tristra: it should be automated somehow.

[00:28:27] Dmitri: It should. It should be automated somehow.

[00:28:29] Tristra: Let's add another layer of fantasy to this.

[00:28:31] Dmitri: Well, I mean, I think people are trying to solve that, solve that problem.

[00:28:34] Tristra: Absolutely.

[00:28:34] Dmitri: And, part of the issue is we're sort of like unpacking these songs after they've been created.

And in reality, the technology that's needed is to capture it at song creation.

[00:28:44] Tristra: Yeah.

[00:28:44] Dmitri: Where if you could put in some sort of, fingerprinting or, sonic, notation or, or something that. Still remains once AI has ingested it, and in some ways can you do that agnostically regardless of who's gonna train on your data and do you actually have to have partnerships and deals in place when the stuff gets ingested, which means it needs to be licensed And that way the attribution model starts at the beginning, not after the fact.

[00:29:11] Tristra: Yeah. Yeah. That's the, hopefully that is the golden age to which we are speeding.

[00:29:17] Dmitri: Yeah. And you know, DAWs are getting involved. So maybe if it's done at the DAW at the moment of the DAW, that's probably as close as you're gonna get to the, the creation of the song.

Oh.

[00:29:25] Tristra: So this is, that's gonna be our indie horror movie. Question mark for 2026. Dmitri Dawn of the DAWs.

[00:29:32] Dmitri: Yes.

[00:29:34] Tristra: Well, it's, it's late in the year. Everybody. We're tired. We're goofy.

[00:29:38] Dmitri: Do you have, Tristra, do you have one more article we should jump into here?

[00:29:41] Tristra: No, I think I mean, I feel like we pretty much, beat 2025 with a stick.

[00:29:47] Dmitri: All right. Well, it's been great. Each episode we've done together has been a blast, but this has been a fun one, especially just to reflect back, hopefully as you are wrapping presents, unwrapping presents, making eggnog, drinking eggnog,

[00:30:00] Tristra: creating your voice bot for your for your relatives.

[00:30:03] Dmitri: Having your avatar, sled down a snowy hill.

 this has been a, a good listen to sort of like wrap up the year. We're excited to be talking to you and here on the podcast and at the Music Tectonics Conference in 2026, which is happening as well. So, uh, make sure, yay, make sure you stay on the Music Tectonics newsletter. Hit us@musictectonics.com to stay up to date on all our online events, in-person events and news.

Roundups Tricia. Happy New Year.

[00:30:28] Tristra: Happy New Year.

Let us know what you think! Tweet @MusicTectonics, find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or connect with podcast host Dmitri Vietze on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.